Saban Films has announced that they have acquired North American rights to Nick Rowland’s (Ripper Street, Hard Sun) feature film debut Calm With Horses starring Cosmo Jarvis (Lady Macbeth, Peaky Blinders), Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, Niamh Algar (Raised by Wolves, The Virtues) and Ned Dennehy (Peaky Blinders, Guns Akimbo), the crime drama was written by Joe Murtagh.

Calm With Horses is a DMC Film, Element Pictures production in association with Altitude Film Entertainment; developed and co-financed by Film4 and Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland with the participation of The Western Region Audiovisual Producer’s Fund/WRAP Fund. Daniel Emmerson is producing, with Michael Fassbender and Conor McCaughan serving as executive producers, for DMC. Further exec producers are Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe for Element Pictures (Room, The Favourite), Sam Lavender, Sue Bruce-Smith and Daniel Battsek for Film4, Will Clarke and Mike Runagall for Altitude, Celine Haddad for Screen Ireland, and Sarah Dillon for the WRAP Fund. Element’s Rory Gilmartin (Rosie) and Kate Glover (Black Mirror, McMafia) are serving as co-producers.

In darkest rural Ireland, ex-boxer Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong has become the feared enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family, whilst also trying to be a good father to his autistic five-year-old son, Jack. Torn between these two families, Arm’s loyalties are truly tested when he is asked to kill for the first time.

Saban Films’ Bill Bromiley said, “Nick Rowland’s debut shines through its cast of rising stars.  Each actor connects deeply with their roles as Nick’s direction pulls audiences into the West Ireland drug scene.”